


Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vampire seduction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You

**Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You**

**(Louis)**

Lestat came up the back stairs calling my name, and in the cadence of his voice I heard that particular, twitchy restlessness that heralded his predatory nature emerging. Crackling energy surrounded me when he swept into the room and shortly thereafter he leaned over the back of the chair. His arms surrounded me and I turned my head to receive his demanding kiss.

"Mmm. Much better." he stated, straightening up and raking his hair back. He stalked around to the side of the desk and perched a lean hip upon it. "Still playing accountant, Louis?" he asked. He was delectable in soft jeans, blindingly white shirt and narrow, dark jacket. He flicked a fang with his tongue.

"Just so." I told him, turning back to the laptop where I'd been looking through the intaglio of our bank accounts. 

He rose to his feet again, prowling the room. "Why don't you let Brian do that?" he said, opening the doors to the narrow balcony outside the office. He turned around expectantly and the slow smile he gave me ignited a familiar heat that radiated from the base of my spine, upwards.

"Brian has many talents, Lestat, but he is by no means up to wading through the minefield of our convoluted holdings and presenting anything coherent to the IRS. He's not an accountant, after all."

"Neither are you, _mon ange_ , " he pointed out reasonably, folding his arms across his chest.

"I have a great deal of practice, Lestat. As you well know." I picked up my pen again, and bent my head to the forms once more, smiling a little at his exasperated little sigh. 

"I suppose that this means you couldn't possibly tear yourself away from your puzzle."

"I wish to finish the bank statements, at least. " I said, resisting the urge to look up at him. If he saw my eyes, there was a chance that he would glean that I was less than interested in working on the taxes any longer this evening. Knowing his intent, I had formed another plan. 

He fidgeted about for another quarter of an hour, and I forced myself to work steadily. He exhaled another forlorn sigh and returned to stand beside the chair. "Louis?"

I looked up at him questioningly, as though I had all this time been unaware of his growing thirst. It had been several weeks since he had hunted, and he wanted blood. Living mortal blood, rich and sweet. He has always been voracious in his appetites. His hunger and my seeming absorption had distracted him, so he missed the longing that I felt certain showed in my eyes. 

"You're hungry, my love." I said, reaching to cup his face. He rubbed against my palm, growling softly. 

"I feel like hunting." he said. There was a sharp note in his voice, one that made my groin tighten. Again, his tongue flicked obsessively at one sharp fang and his eyes were grey and hazy. He blinked, and the feral shine diminished somewhat as he focused on my face. "I won't be gone long.."

Again I was overcome, not only from the love I saw in his eyes, but for how he has changed. How everything has changed for us. "I'll be here when you return, 'Stat." I said, as he pulled me to my feet to embrace me."And you may then regale me with your escapades." His mouth covered mine and I was lost to him for a while. I don't know how long a time the kiss lasted, I only became aware again when he released me. He left the room and I rose to my feet when I heard the front door close behind him.

Moments later, I was knocking on Brian's door. He called for me to come in, and I heard him coming down the stairs. He wore a robe, his hair was wet and he was holding a towel. I started up the steps and he smiled tentatively. "What did I forget this time?" he asked, referring to my nightly requests for documents related to the puzzle that is the Lioncourt tax return.

"Nothing that I know of." I said, gesturing him back up the stairs and following him. He smelled good, clean skin, and only the lightest of scents in his hair from the shampoo he used. I was unsure if he would even have what I have come to borrow. 

"Do you have any cologne?"

His brows came together in a slight frown. He doesn't wear scent because he knows I dislike it. I was impatient, and didn't feel like explaining everything to him at that moment.

"You smell fine. I need to borrow cologne if you have any." I persisted.

His hesitation disappeared and he went into his steamy bathroom and rummaged around for a moment. When he reappeared, he was holding a small bottle. "This do ya?" he asked, handing it to me. I nodded, taking it. He was curious but asked no questions. 

"Perfect." I said. The bottle said 'Nautica' on it. I didn't bother to open it...whatever it smelled like, I was sure it would be enough to cover my own scent for a time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I stopped. 

"One more thing, if you don't mind." He stood beside me, looking at me in the mirror questioningly. "Scissors." 

"Scissors. Right." he half-raised his hand, as though he wanted to touch me, but turned suddenly. "Downstairs." 

I followed him back downstairs into his kitchen, where he fished a pair from one of the drawers. I took them from him and went down the narrow hallway to his downstairs bathroom. Brian trailed after me like a curious puppy, and he watched as I first cut my hair and then clipped it short, his eyes roaming from my face to the shorn locks in his sink.

"Let me fix the back." he said, taking the scissors. He ran his fingers through and pulled it back, clipping here and there. "There. Not expert, but it hardly matters. You look great." 

Brian stepped back and I when I turned to look at him, he ran his fingers through the front of my hair once, brushing it back from my brow. His breathing was shallow, and I could hear his heart cantering along, but his hand was steady. "Whatever you're up to, I'm betting he'll mention the haircut first." he said with a grin. "And after that, the shirt."

"Doubtless." I said. "I'm sure Lestat will tell you all about it later. I am pressed for time." I left him silhouetted in the door of his little house.

*******

It did not take me long to find Lestat. I am aware of his habits and I had an idea where he would be from the clothes he'd been wearing when he left. People, lots of noise and light, and likely not in the Quarter.

I found him at a club on St. Charles. After the initial resistance of the man at the door who seemed to object to how I was dressed, I shouldered my way through the crowd and spotted him immediately--his back to me, the pale halo of his hair gleaming in the dim, smoky air. How easily he moved among them, as though he belonged there, as though he'd been born a mere twenty years ago. His laughter sounded in my ears above the din of the crowd and the thumping dance music and yes, I could smell him, just barely, over the reek of the Nautica I'd splashed on moments before I entered the bar. 

I found an unoccupied banquette in one corner with a good view of the long bar and the crowded dance floor and tucking my foot under my thigh, I settled back to watch him. He was the darling of the little knot of mortals he stood with, both women and men vying for his attention. He basked in all of it, trading repartee and innuendoes, his body language reacting to the ebb and flow of the bodies near him. I could not hear much of it, but I have been with him in similar situations and I was easily able to imagine the inane patter. It wasn't too long before he'd set his sights on someone--several someones, actually.

In some moods, Lestat is perfectly happy to settle for the Little Drink and he will go from mortal to mortal, a bee visiting flowers. He exercises his considerable power with careless ease and leaves each of them a bit dizzy, p but none the wiser for his little thefts. How they arch to him, sighing and blissful, even at the sting of his bite and how beautiful he appears to me, practicing this specific Vampire's art. I leaned forward, willing interlopers from my line of sight, my hands clutching at my thighs.

He danced with a woman, holding her with his gaze and swaying seductively with her. She twined her slim arms about his neck. He murmured to her and bent his head to her neck. I caught glimpse of his eyes, dripping indigo fire, and I knew when he pierced her by the sudden stiffening of her lithe body. The scent of drawn blood overpowered even the odor of the cologne I wore. Combined with the sight of him drinking, and then casually moving to his next choice had me nearly sick with lust and longing.

Several times during his prowl of the place he stopped, head up, scenting and listening but each time I managed to avoid being discovered. It may have been that he could hear the thud of my heart or perhaps the scent of my blood called to him, as his most surely called me. 

I followed him to another place, this one in more chancy neighborhood, inhabited by locals more than tourists or students. Lestat enjoyed places like that, especially when he stood out among them, a peacock amongst pigeons. 'I like to stir the pot, Louis.' He would tell me, "Biker cuisine." "Hardly." I would reply, "They reek of beer and tobacco and marijuana."

And he was stirring the pot this time as well, making an entrance that was certain to offend certain types of men as well as draw the attention of their women. This behavior most certainly elevated the boozy atmosphere from raucous and loud to dangerous and loud. What they did not realize was that the danger was to them rather than to the interloper in their midst. 

It was less easy to hide myself in such a place, for, dark though it was it was a good deal smaller than the last bar he'd visited. I managed to slip in unnoticed by him, and found a place to lean against the wall where I could recede behind a pay phone on the wall.

The smell of such places has changed very little in the course of several centuries. When I enter a bar like this one and close my eyes it could just as easily be the waterfront tavern that I had staggered from the night Lestat set his sights upon me. Ale-soaked wood and tobacco and the reek of sweating bodies, and what I would have described then as the smell of my drowning pool. I drown now in Lestat, _mon ange_ , and to succumb to him is sweet indeed. 

Said angel was currently pressing the self-control buttons of a very large, bearded man, dressed in oily jeans, a T-shirt grey with filth and the requisite leather vest. Lestat leaned negligently against the bar, a mug of beer in one hand, trailing an elegant finger around one of the myriad rings on the bar. It was evident that his very posture had enraged the man. 

Strong emotions like fear and anger spill large amounts of adrenaline into the blood and enhance the taste/experience of taking the blood enormously. Those things that are in the blood when we drink it do affect us...the blood of an inebriated mortal will pass to the vampire an echo of that drunkenness. Strong narcotics have an effect as well, and certain other compounds. Hallucinogens and artificial stimulants are less pleasant. Nothing spices the blood like adrenaline, however, and vampires are the original adrenaline junkies. 

Lestat seemed intent on working the big biker into a fury. When the man asked him with heavily ponderous sarcasm if he'd come into the bar by mistake, Lestat made a show of looking politely confused.

"Lost? Now why would you think that....Rat, is it?" Lestat asked invading Rat's personal space and offering his most seductive smile.

"The fuck?" Rat said, outraged. Lestat ran his tongue across the satin of his lower lip. I leaned forward, watching him avidly. Rat gave him a hard shove and Lestat allowed himself to fall back, stumbling a little, for effect. He righted himself gracefully and gave Rat a reproachful look. 

"No need for violence, my friend." he said. Rat's friends were watching with boozy interest. 

"Yeah!" Called one of the hard-looking women. "No need for violence, Ratty!" There was general laughter which further infuriated Rat. Lestat restrained himself from licking his lips again, I knew it by the tension in his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes. The set of his back and shoulders was intensely predatory, but none of the inebriated patrons noticed this at all.

I know his immense strength, the power he reins in much of the time, even with me. He does not always realize that he does so. I urge him on, for I am matched with him strength for strength now, our blood so mingled as to be very nearly the same. I urge him on and he can release himself to me, he can use his power, he can stretch and soar with me without feeling monstrous with the knowledge that such potency is beyond the realm of anything either of us could have imagined as human beings.

Lestat, no longer human, was stalking. He did not do this as an animal, for his seduction and his guile are far beyond that. He toyed, he pushed. Dodge-parry-thrust. He taunted and fell back, with an attempt at meekness that did not fool even the pugnacious Rat. Like a rat, there was also a feral cunning in this human, and I began to see why Lestat chose him. Rat's thoughts were violent and enraged. Rat has killed men before, he has abused women but these vapid evils are pedestrian, as they have always been. The challenge is this; can Lestat drink his anger and savor the taste of it turning to fear or will the anger grow and blossom when this mortal realizes his helplessness in the lethal embrace of a most inhuman creature? 

Either way, his thirst will be slaked. He will come to me full and brimming with the brine of human blood roaring through his veins, simmering with the demon's blood that animates us, until it has been absorbed into a perfect distillation ready to be decanted into my waiting and eager mouth.

I leaned back against the wall, willing my pulse to slow, my heart not to echo with such thunder, for once more Lestat's head was up as he scanned the place, seeking. He knows, I thought. He knows that I am near and that he knows affords me supreme satisfaction. 

The stalking continued, with Lestat leading his Rat easily into sullen anger, and then wandering from the mortal as though he was ridiculously unaware that he has pushed too hard. Rat retreated to the bar to down shots of hard liquor, fueling his fury and tamping down the threads of unease that the reptile part of his brain was sending in dire warning. He could not pay attention, because it meant he would lose face in front of the other Rats and Weasels and Bunnies. Susies and Cheryls, Waynes and Billys, none of whom really mean very much to him. It was the loss of face that concerned him. Loss of face to a pretty college boy. He knocked Wayne's hand from his shoulder and snarled at Bunny when she sidled near to offer sympathy and sex. 

Lestat watched sidelong, whiling away a quarter of an hour with a wise-cracking female with a weathered face and a buccaneer's grin. He bought her a drink and she told him in low, confidential tones that he should be careful of Rat, because Rat in his cups was no one to fool around with. She warned Lestat that Rat had a gun, and probably a knife and Lestat laughed, pleased that she would warn him, of all people, of danger. She didn't know what he was, of course, and something about her manner touched him, for he softened slightly from the raised hackles of fifteen minutes earlier. He told her he would be careful and kissed her worn cheek lightly before wending his way to the blaring jukebox. I wanted to leave then, to wait for him outside, to watch him come out and see his victim follow after him, but I was mesmerized by him. 

When he is near me I can't take my eyes from him, and even now my fingers twitched and my hands tingled, craving the supple suede of the flesh over his ribs, the tenderness of skin at the backs of his knees. Blood sweat prickled my skin, and I forced myself to move toward the rear exit, knowing that he'd catch that scent, cologne or no, and his pretense of not knowing I was nearby would evaporate.

I stood outside, drawing in gulps of cool, rainy air, every muscle tense, the heat that centered itself at my groin, spiraled outward, enveloping me. I walked around the building and peered into the steamed glass of the front window, but he was not visible.

  


**(Lestat)**  


I saw him twice, and both of those times only the briefest glimpse. I knew he was there. I'd known it when he came into the club on St. Charles. Following me. Louis following me! It was altogether too delicious. I played the game, of course, difficult though it became. I caught the first glimpse when he left the bar ahead of me, an impression of his black hair, clipped raggedly short, long legs encased in snug jeans.

I visited several clubs and I thought for a time that he had gone back home, but then I felt him again. I found it strange indeed that I could not clearly scent him. At first I thought what I smelled was his scent upon me, but then I heard the preternatural beat of his heart, closely echoing mine. I looked, but could not see him. The game was still afoot. 

I am oftentimes called impatient and restless and these things are true. There is another side of me, however, one that Louis has carefully and painstakingly drawn forth. I have learned from him the art of anticipation. He is far more skilled at the intricacies of this practice, adroit to the point of blessed pain at times, but I've learned much and I have my moments. It is my delight to occasionally surprise him with my hard-won restraint. 

Don't laugh...it does happen. 

I singled out a mortal at the bar, a behemoth of a man, violent and dangerous and not a little crazy and I played with him, goading and taunting for a time and then backing off. The thirst I'd built up over several weeks had been dampened by the tastes I'd taken over the course of the evening. When I realized that Louis was nearby once again, that thirst flared up, hot and surprisingly vehement, sharpened by the edge of lust. Knowing that he watched was very nearly as arousing as watching him hunt as I so loved to do.

The surge in my hunger made it a little easier to focus again on my quarry, and I stopped trying to locate Louis and threw myself into stalking the mortal, and I could tell by the sudden, piquant scent of Louis's bloodsweat that I still had his attention. All to the good. Anticipation, I told myself, as I turned my back blithely on the mortal, bathing in the scent of his anger. Anticipation.

I took some time to talk to a woman. She had a hard edge to her, but her smile was surprisingly honest, even warm, and I detected a faded beauty there beneath the weight of years and hard living. She seemed concerned for me after witnessing my exchange with Monsieur Le Rat, and did her best to warn me that I might be in some danger. This tickled me and touched me at the same time, for she had no motive behind her smile or her words other than kindness. I kissed her on the cheek and shouldered my way to the jukebox.

I caught my second glimpse of Louis when I raised my head from perusing the selections in the juke. There he was, leaned against the wall by the public telephone. He disappeared from my view quite suddenly, and so I made my selections and turned to move back to the bar for another round with my intended victim.

  


**(Louis)**  


Later on he found me, for I did not wander far afield. I wished to be found. I wished for far more than that. My pretty Lestat...he shone like gold. He sat down beside me at the polished wooden bar. "You were following me.”

"Why, yes." I told him, turning my head slightly to look into his eyes. "I followed you." He lifted his hand to my cheek, caressing. 

"I know now why I could not scent you properly, sweetheart." he said, nostrils flaring, followed by a pained grimace. "You were determined to keep me in the dark, were you?"

"I am determined to fuck you silly." I told him. "I am determined to drink from you until you can barely move. Does that suit your whim?"

"Mmm."

The letters do not at all describe the warm honeyed sound of Lestat's voice, the caressing note that resonated deep within me.

"Fuck me silly?" he asked dreamily.

"Yes."

"Drain me?"

"Nearly dry." I agreed.

He ran his fingers through my hair. "You cut it off." he murmured, licking the edge of my ear. “So beautiful, my Louis." he muttered, the words trailing off into a soft growl. He enchanted me, the deep, lazy heat of him. The blood of the large mortal victim he'd taken seethed in him, sweet and still living, pinking his tawny skin, and giving it a mouth-wateringly soft glow. 

His skin was supple to my touch and always there is a heat within him. We are not human. The humans that we once were are long since dead, changed now into the creatures we have become but our flesh is not dead flesh, it is vampiric flesh, and to other vampires the tactile sensation of it is indescribable. 

To mortals we feel strangely smooth and hard. 'Like a warm, sort of flexible shell.' Brian said once, trying to describe the sensation. He has also said he has not noticed that we are cool to his touch sometimes, though others he said if he didn't know better he would have thought us feverish. Of course h would notice a coolness; his living flesh is deliciously heated and we would only feel so to him after feeding.

"You did not stay for the kill." Lestat murmured, his breath hot in my ear. Several of the patrons of the bar we were in stared openly at us. I imagine Lestat's unbridled arousal made us rather noticeable for surely no one could miss the incandescent sapphire glitter of his eyes. I am never much inclined to be anything other than what I really am, finding that mortals will let their eyes and their thoughts skitter past when something disturbs them. At this moment Lestat was not interested in passing under their radar. "I found myself becoming overly stimulated." I told him, feigning a lightness that I did not feel. 

He sat facing me, his legs wide apart. One of his knees touched mine, where I faced the bar, and his other knee nudged my hip. He had one hand splayed over his thigh and the other curled around a mug of beer, and I thought that if I strained to listen I would hear the stress of the heavy glass beneath his grip. The tendons in his wrist stood out, corded and tight. One glance into the ferocious blue maelstrom of his eyes nearly did me in. I tore my gaze from him and looked forward at the mirror behind the twinkling rows of bottles.

"Ah, _oui_? And do you feel so now, my dove? Will you not look at me?" 

I could see him in the mirror, yearning toward me. His posture cried out possession, his face was fierce and glorious with lust. "I see you." I whispered, and he turned his head to meet my eyes in the mirror. "I see you always in my mind. When you are near me I cannot take my eyes from you."

"I would have stayed home with you." he said softly. 

"You were too restless by far, _mon lion_." I said, smiling a little. 

"As you were, I see. I should have known that taxes were not foremost on your mind. Who is Lelio this evening, I wonder?" He watched me in the mirror as he spoke, his hungry eyes fastened on my image. "Do you know, Louis, that with your hair shorn, your eyes stand out even more? And your neck..." He licked his lips

"Greedy baby." I said. "Have you not had your fill?"

"I have had my fill of them." Lestat gestured vaguely at the mortals around us "Shall we go?"

"Go? But Lestat, you have not finished your beer."

He gave me a withering stare. "And I never will. But if you would rather stay awhile, then of course we shall. The night is young after all." He brushed a flaxen tendril from his face and angled himself to face forward as I was doing.

"I don't want to stay here." I said. "Walk with me, Lestat?"

  


**(Lestat)**  


We walked, and Louis steadily fed the fire of my need for him as we did, refusing to hurry and giving lie to my earlier statement that I had learnt restraint. I wanted to put him up against the wall and fuck him through the crumbling bricks the moment we left the bar. That is not what happened of course. What happened was we made our leisurely way home, and he whispered to me on the streetcar of the things he wished to do to me. He sat, warm and enticing in the circle of my arm with his head laid upon my shoulder while the rainy wind ruffled his hair.

When we reached Canal Street, did we head directly home? Oh, no. A circuit of the Quarter was on his agenda. He kept his slow pace, but I felt a change in him, a trembling thrum in his muscles and a curious tightening of his jaw. When Louis is hungry, he becomes tense...not edgy, like me...rather, his body becomes tighter, as though he were knitting in upon himself and he will often go completely still. He did not grow still as we walked, though that has happened at other times. His walk, though, _that_ changed. Slinkier, more cat-like. His eyes glittered, and he breathed with his mouth open, drawing in scents, sorting through them. He went quiet and his gaze fell frequently upon me. Mortals moved from our path, some confused and others with distinct expressions of alarm. It was time, then, I knew for us to go home.

Once in our bed, I moaned and writhed to have Louis at last deep inside my body, to have his voracious mouth drawing fiercely from me. Our minds met at last in our communion of blood and he shared my earlier kill, the memory of my teeth tearing sweet mortal flesh. The shuddery thrill of draining that one's life, spiked with his anger to the end. The mortal insisted stolidly to himself that he was only dreaming, only dreaming. That mortal, big, and strong, like a babe in my embrace, and falling at last to the loss of his vital fluid. Vital fluid that Louis took from me now, his arms tight about me. I ground myself down upon him, willing him further into me, feeling him buried deep as I rocked on his lap, my legs around his hips. His fingers clutched bruisingly.

He released the pulsing wound at my throat and moaned my name, lapping at the small river that cascaded from the wound, He rubbed his face in the diminishing flow, pushing up harder into me. His eyes met mine, angelic mouth smeared with gore. We rocked together, panting harshly. 

"I can't hold..." he muttered, his fangs slicing his lips.

"Let go." I said, grasping his shoulders and pulling him close so that I could kiss bleeding, swollen lips.

  


***********  


  


**(Louis)**  


He is sleeping now, sprawled loosely across me, his hand between my thighs, cupping me gently. The room is a ruin,and we are covered in bites and bruises that will be gone by the time we next awaken. To be with him is like madness. He makes me burn and the love I feel for him is a twisting live thing inside me. It does not give me the pain it once did, but I cannot rest but to think of him so close to me, to have his scent in my head and his body touching mine. I cannot take my eyes from him, looking at his face in the mirror across from the bed. He looks innocent in spite of the blood and the bruises; his face shines like a light.

" _Je t'aime, Louis._ " he mutters sleepily, shifting so that he is in closer contact with me. 

"I know, my love." I tell him. "Sleep, now." He releases a contented little sigh and drifts away again. My eyes are wide in the dim room, so I can watch him.

 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story back in February of 2003. I did some editing and updating before this post.


End file.
